* This was originally posted to the webont list. I move it here *
* because this is a more appropriate forum for this sort of discussion. *
"Stephane Fellah" <fellah@pcigeomatics.com> asked:
>
>I am interested to develop ontologies for Engineering mathematics. So
>far, the best model I have found is the one developed by KSL Stanford in
>OntoLingua (EngMath ontologies). Is anyone aware of some activities
>porting this ontologies in OWL ? The ontology has been developed in LISP
>and KIF ? Is it completely portable in OWL or do I need some extensions
>in OWL such as OWL Rule Language ? The link to EngMath is at :
>http://www.ksl.stanford.edu/knowledge-sharing/papers/engmath.html.
>If no activities is done for this, I think it may be useful to develop
>it as an open-source ontology. What would be the best approach to
>initiate such a project as open-source ? Do other ontologies exist for
>engineering mathematics ?
An OWL version of such an ontology would be a "good thing." Discussions
a while back on these lists, revealed that the XML derived semantics for
integers and floats in RDF are not what is wanted for such engineering uses
such as measured values. Developing an open-source OWL-based engineering
math ontology is also a timely idea as there has recently been talk of some
of the high profile promoters of the semantic web directly supporting an
open-source ontology registry/repository.
For Semantic Web styled models in this area, have a look at David Leal's work
on an RDF(S) vocacabulary for quantities and units[1]. This reuses work that
was done as part of the ISO STEP standardization effort to support information
exchange of (manufactured) product data. CIM/XML[2] may also include models
for units and measured values, although again these would be in RDFS. CIM
is a power industry standard and their control systems associate somewhat richer
metadata with measured values.
Evan K. Wallace
Manufacturing Systems Integration Division
NIST
ewallace@nist.gov
[1] http://www.scadaonweb.com/publications/units/2/NOTE-units-2002-05-07.html
[2] http://www.langdale.com.au/CIMXML/